Coming Face to Face with Childhood Wrongs

My son has gotten into making his own Trail Mix for snacks at school -- cereal ... raisins .... dried cranberries ... granola .... m & m's .... mixed nuts -- all put into zplock top baggies and carted off to school for that morning snack (they call it '3rd hr snack') that they need to bring from home as long as its healthy.

I was buying the premade trail mix and having the kid add some of the chex or mini-wheats or cheerios to it - what ever we had on hand that was opened that morning.

well that trail mix is kind of expensive, especially when I looked at the fact that I had everything but the nuts at home already just sitting there waiting for the next time I decide to make either "Red, White, & Blue bread" or "3 Kings Bread"-mystyle. All I needed were the nuts -- so this week we got the huge can of mixed nuts at Sam's instead of the Trail Mix.

So this morning we were throwing together his batch when he noticed that there were these HUGE nuts in there ... "hey mom what are these?" ....

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and I realized that I didn't know the real name of these nuts -- I explained that the name we called them wasn't acceptable anymore (not that it ever really was, but as kids it was the only time you were allowed to use a bad word and not get the soap in the mouth or the hand upside the head)

So here's my bit for education:

These are Brazil nuts
they come from .... South America (Peru - the main exporter , Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, and yes, Brazil - but not so much, go figure)

the seed is tri-cornered and hard to crack - if you've ever gotten a bag of Mixed Nuts for the holidays you know the average nut cracker has a tough time handling them - you really need a hammer to open them. And yes they are a seed - they are encapsulated in a coconut-like pod which contains about 15 of the 'Brazil nuts' with in it.

only one bee (the orchid bee) is able to pollinate the flower of the tree, thus producing the nuts (they use the sent of the Brazil nut tree to attract female bees - hey that's different from what we're used to, where there is only one female per hive and all males service her)

Interesting stuff.

Brazil nuts .... not N-Toes ... Brazil Nuts.